Two questions about computer buying

I have two questions about buying a computer:

-When is the best time of the summer to buy a computer from Dell (when it comes to prices and such)?

-What CD/DVD rom speed do you recommend for me to get? I plan to use this computer alot for gaming.

Thank you.

 

CD/DVD speed doesn't matter for gaming...i cannot think of 1 game that seriously runs on the CD. They all just install to the hard drive and use the CD for authentication and occasional music. So whatever is out there is good enough. As for best time to buy a Dell, I don't know. Sorry.

 

Uhhh, for gaming, forget DELL, they talk about cutting out the middle man....they are the middle man lol
Min:
6600GT grafics
2x512 MB ram (PC3200)
AMD64 (min 3000+)
and a mobo to go with it (939 socket)

ohh, and get a DVD drive, all the new games are DVD

 

if you can manage, build it yourself. that way great savings and better specs.

 

DELL HELL!!BEWARE!!BEWARE!!

 

oh yeah, as far as cd, alchohol 120%, google

 

dell has good support also, depends on what you are comortable with

performance or piece of mind

 

yep, they have nice screens, but I gave the eq. of 900 uk pounds for mine (in denmark) think it would cost a bit more at dell, anyway I got some hidden trauma about DELL LOL, dont know why

Guess I would never dream of buying a compl. machine anyway

ups. edit thats without a screen

 

The way I see it is nearly every part you put into a pc yourself comes with a 3 year warranty,so if it goes you just get a fresh one so new built pc basically has a 3 year warranty,so I have complete peice of mind with mine.

I havn't looked at any high end dell's,but I cant imagine they are putting name brand components in them,I had a quick look at the link,and they still dont name the memory,or give detailed specs of the mobo.

 

I was demonstrating that a home built sytem can have better quality parts for less,without sacrificing warranty,support and peice of mind,I am not arguing which path to take,as you said if the high end dell's are good they are worth looking at.I was hasty in my first post dicounting dell's.I'm just posing questions and giving my opinion about the choice because the questions cant be asks once the purchase has been made.

 

I have a dell and i have to say support was very helpfull while it lasted. I just called dell and had someone walk me threw whatever i needed.

 

i used to have a dell back in the day. a trusty 4600, the gfx were not bad, and i never had a problem with anything major. i upgraded gfx card to a 9600, and nothing ever happened. i agree that building will give you better specs for cheaper price, and that buying from dell gives you comfort in knowing that if something happens you can get it fixed for free, but like someone stated earlier most parts come with there own warrantys any way, so if you know how to build computers, that would most likely be your best bet.

 

I disagree; they "Fix it for free" after you paid an extreme premium for that pc. Example my dell from college has a 3yr warrenty. If you go to configure this dell and the 3yr 'guarantee', 80% of the original value of the laptop is added as a premium.

 

well i highly doubt that anybody that knew how to build computers would go out and spend the money for a NAME BRAND gaming pc anyway. also, people who dont have the know how about building a computer would prolly not be looking to upgrade there machine any way. (maybe because not everyone knows how to do it) just because its simple for geeks like us ...doesnt mean its simple for everyone. im just saying the 3 year warranty gives them comfort in knowing that if anything went wrong the computer it would be fixed, and yes for FREE. i believe dell has some of the lowest prices for decent pc's on the market right now. if your looking for an all out gaming machine, you probably know the difference between a mb and a kb, so name brand gaming pc's would not be an option to you.

in my mind dell, or any other namebrand pc for that matter, is great for the avearge buyer

 

When i first got the dell there was something wrong with it so they had me send evrything back and replaced it for free.

 

If you want to play games, then you should go with an Athlon 64 based system. That means no Dell since they don't sell AMD based machines. Check out Gateway, or HP/Compaq if you want a big name machine, but no matter what, you should go for the following components:

Processor/CPU: AMD Athlon 64
Video: no built-in on-board junk. Go with at least an ATI Radeon 9800(or above) or Geforce 5900 or above.

Memory: 1 gig PC3200 if you go with an Athlon 64.

The reason for going with the Athlon 64 over a P4 is the memory controller on the CPU. That gives a HUGE performance boost in just about every application and game. You also don't need to pay a price premium for DDR-2 memory.

Dell tends to be picky about the memory you put in, so even if you have memory that matches the spec for your machine, it may not work because of the internal settings on the memory.

For the moment, you can generally get a bit of a price/performance benefit going with a socket 754 Athlon 64 compared to the socket 939 version, but you sacrifice the ability to upgrade further down the road. The upgrade would be to just drop a faster CPU in without replacing everything.

Going with an Nforce 4 Ultra chipset on the motherboard is probably your best bet at the moment. The SLI version only matters if you want to run two Nvidia video cards in SLI mode, ATI won't run in SLI mode on these boards, so if you go with an ATI video card, don't worry about that.

Most companies that sell parts will also build the computer for you for a small fee. So you could pick the parts(or have someone pick them for you), then find a place that sells them all and when you order, ask to have the machine built.